The Genesis

of the JIBC

ometimes an idea is so right, so timely, that it
occurs to several people more or less at once.
The Justice Institute of British Columbia is just
such a simultaneous conception. No equivalent exists
anywhere else. So original is the idea behind the Insti-
tute that one wonders who, among its many parents,
thought of it first?

Who was the first to imagine the Institute's ongoing experiment in lifelong
learning in justice, public safety and human services? Whose idea was it
to have most of the faculty seconded from active units and street-level
departments employing experienced, real-world practitioners? Who first
conceived of combining law enforcement savvy with knowledge of the
social welfare systems that protect us from the worst outcomes of drawing
the low card in life—or from the worst consequences of just being in the
wrong place at the wrong time?

By its thirtieth year in 2008, the Justice Institute—the JIBC or, in
colloquial conversation, just the JI—was serving 30,000 students a year.
It had been founded on the idea, and ideal, of creating a post-secondary
institute whose graduates are well prepared to face the demands of a career
that involves service and sacrifice for the benefit of others. The Institute is
the educational body that offers programs in the lifesaving, crime fighting
and crisis intervention occupations that are the foundation of our way of
life. Among them are policing and public safety, fire prevention and fire
fighting, ambulance and pre-hospital treatment, search and rescue, plan-
ning for and managing public emergencies (such as B.C’s wildfires of 2003),
conflict resolution and mediation, courts and corrections, and other vital
areas demanding sound education and training for those who make our
communities safe.

Safe and sound.

All of these necessities—and more—fall within the JIBC’s diverse
educational mandate. As well as delivering programs in 160 communities

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